Whichever city you live in, there’s no denying dieting is a hateful thing to do. It’s boring, antisocial and time-consuming. But I like to think Abu Dhabians have it a little harder than most. It was a few weeks into January when I realised my foolhardy resolution wasn’t going to succeed. Work was busy, the weather was cold(ish) and, predictably, all the good intentions of those first heady moments of the new year had started to melt away. An easy promise to make when happily stuffed with Christmas cake is a hard promise to keep, it turns out, when you’re back in the capital.
It all started so well. New Year’s Day began with a long lie-in. With half the day absorbed already, there was little time left for stuffing my face with leftover chocolate Santas, so post-Christmas treats were smugly declined, and dinner was salad.
Continuing the week by dragging myself out to my suddenly crowded gym at 7am, seeing the faces of people who had made the same promise, gave me a sense of camaraderie – a pulling together of those who shared the same dream, the same noble goal: to lose about three kilos.
There are a few rules, however, that every dieter knows. For example, free food has no calories. You haven’t sought it out, so why would you work it into the day’s calorie allowance? Anyway, it would be rude to decline, so it’s not like you have a choice.
Likewise, food you don’t enjoy. How miserable would it be to take a few bites out of a badly cooked dinner, and then realise you can’t take the taste out of your mouth with a handful of chocolate buttons? Then there are broken biscuits, food eaten standing up or anything picked from the fridge. None of these are proper meals, so why bother adding up the fat content? Also, a taste of something – calculating the calories in a forkful of cake is surely the action of a crazy person. Salad and fruit cancel out anything unhealthy – so a chocolate-dipped strawberry is neutral, and fries are fine, just as long as there’s a salad on the side.
For some reason, though, despite sticking rigidly to the rules, three months in the Christmas weight is yet to melt off. And with peak beach season almost upon us, the panic is starting to set in. However, I’ve formed a plan – from now on I’m going to eat only fruit and vegetables – yup, nothing but carrot cake and banana fritters from here on in…
Rebecca Morice is our health-obsessed page editor.
